In the last scene of Sidney Lumet’s last film, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” a father and son played by two formidable actors, Albert Finney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, grapple with each other in garish mortal combat that goes beyond Shakespearean into a realm of intensity that’s quintessentially Lumetian. The director, who died this morning at the age of 86, loved actors, loved drama, loved making movies and made a succession of wonderful ones — plus a few turkeys, the unavoidable consequence of his productivity — that started with “12 Angry Men” in 1957 and spanned half a century. He didn’t direct “It’s A Wonderful Life,” but he lived one, a life of zestful achievement and exuberant friendship that seldom took him far from New York, the city he used, in all its gritty glory, as his back lot for such films as “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “Prince Of the City” and “The Pawnbroker.”

It was always said of Sidney – a given name that could only be taken in New York to mean Lumet – that actors loved working with him. They did, in large part because he’d been an actor himself, and understood their needs and vulnerabilities. But they must also have been empowered by his unquenchable energy – the fuel of all good performances – and his boundless enthusiasm. Many of his movies were deeply serious: “The Verdict” with its moral intricacies, “The Pawnbroker” with its historical resonances, “Fail-Safe” with its nuclear nightmare, “Long Day’s Journey into Night” with the dark allure of Eugene O’Neill’s vision of family. Sidney, however, did not wear seriousness on his sleeve. He had an infectious laugh, and took endless delight in comedy, some of it high-grade, as in the Marx Brothers, and some of it surprisingly – or endearingly – low, as in the farting sequence in “Blazing Saddles.”

I happen to know about that because I had the good fortune to spend an evening of conversation with him – and his screenwriter daughter Jenny — a couple of years ago. It was one of a series of public conversations that the Journal sponsored at Lincoln Center, and I’d thought of Sidney and Jenny when I saw them do a spontaneous father-and-daughter colloquy at a New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner, where Jenny was being honored for having written “Rachel Getting Married.” Sidney was in his element, meaning he was with the daughter he adored, and talking about the movie medium that was as essential a part of his life as the medium of breathable air.

Of the many things we discussed, the oddest was dishwashers. There’s a scene in “Rachel Getting Married” in which the father of the bride has a dishwasher-loading competition with the bridegroom that seems to be about efficiency but is really about control. The scene, Jenny said, had been inspired by a similar contest she witnessed as a child between her dad and the director/choreographer Bob Fosse.

Sidney laughed ruefully, acknowledging the intensity of his controlling passion. But then later in the evening he told a story about directing Marlon Brando that involved the very opposite of control. The film was “The Fugitive Kind,” and Brando was struggling with an important monologue, the one in which his character compares himself to a bird that’s never able to feel at home anywhere on earth. During take after take he tried to get it right and kept getting it wrong – different varieties of wrong, but wrong nonetheless. Finally, on take 34, he did it brilliantly and that was that. Later, in the actor’s dressing room, Sidney told Brando that he might have been able to help him but didn’t feel he had the right, and Brando said he was glad he hadn’t. Sometimes good directors don’t direct, they simply let life happen. However Sidney did it, he was one of the best.

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